


On Psi Combat

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [134]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, How canon misled you, Psi Combat, Psi Corps, Telepathic Combat, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 00:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: How does telepathic combat work, anyway? And what's training like?The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	On Psi Combat

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

Deadly Relations, p. 28-31 and thereabouts, gives some attempted description of psi combat (both students sparring with each other, and an incident between Bester and one of his teachers).

Whereas there is more to say about what happened between Bester and his teacher - that deserves its own discussion, as it happened shortly before Bester's graduation from Cadre Prime and relates to what I covered [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12665913) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12680634) \- I focus this essay just on how the books depict telepathic combat.

/shakes head/

What we get in the books (here, and in abbreviated form elsewhere) is a puddle of "metaphor soup." It's portrayed as a competition as to who can imagine what, the most quickly:

  * Octopus!
  * Bigger octopus!
  * Giant octopus with swords in its arms!
  * No, mine's got canons!
  * My octopus chops off the arms of yours!
  * Mine has a single giant gun - IN ITS MOUTH!!
  * Mine has a rocket launcher!



I'm only half-making this up. What they actually give us is cobras, hurricanes, lightning with purple fire, a tropical river, spheres and shells, "an oil strike in reverse," floods, poison, acid, effervescent oil on a sunlit pool, eggs, Humpty Dumpty, something "part spider and part octopus, spinning out a hundred tentacle-legs of black concertina wire" (and this is not someone who has been in touch with the Shadows, _so we're clear_ ), scalpels, roots digging in soil, "throbbing green scorpion stings," massive swords in the octopus' arms, the swords transforming into a gun...

You get the point.

And this isn't a description of the mind of someone who has been possessed by the Shadows (e.g. McDwyer) - that's reasonable, and accurate, because the entire point of the metaphor soup there is to show that his mind _doesn't feel human at all_. This stuff above comes up when Bester is sparring with another child in his school, and when his teacher attacks him (more on that in the next essay).

Damn, everyone is super creative, apparently...

As a friend of mine put it, this is "Green Lantern Style" telepathic combat, a system based on who can imagine wilder things more quickly (as "combat metaphors").

Also not correct, but OK. >_<

I see the temptation. "Let's pile metaphors on top of metaphors on top of WILDER METAPHORS so it looks like I'm describing EXCITING PSI COMBAT! It's not like if I just make this up whole cloth, anyone will notice!"

It certainly makes for vividly purple prose...

  * While it is true that metaphors and visualization exercises are used as _training tools_ , this is not to be confused with psi combat _itself_. (The book messes that up here and elsewhere, making it appear that this is "how psi combat works." People's minds all have metaphor forms! The metaphors attack each other using more metaphors!)


  * Actual telepathic combat with rogues, possessed Psi Cops, etc. happens in _one to two seconds_ \- so there is no time to pile your metaphors on the other person's metaphors. It happens so quickly, everything has to be automatic,  _reflexive_. If you have to come up with your "next metaphor," _you've lost._ (And losing means you're dead.)



So what happens instead? People training for _actual_ psi self-defense in the field need to make everything as automatic and reflexive as possible. There is no time to "think" about it, and generally, it's clear who will win before it even begins. And this isn't just about P-rating - this is about the extent of one's training and years of experience - the "worn grooves" Bester talks about in Final Reckoning, how things have become automatic after a lifetime of experience.

That's why starting in the Minor Academy, students begin serious training in martial arts - they are learning discipline. They are learning a way of perceiving, and reacting, that will over time become so automatic (physically and mentally) that if they ever need to use it, it will be there for them to use - _without having to think about it_.

  * Remember also that when Bester is in the Minor Academy, he gets beaten up not just by one normal, but two in a day - whatever the point is of what they're doing here in the cadres, it doesn't actually prepare him _one ounce_ for an encounter in the real world with someone who wants to hurt him. (Which Brett points out, much to Bester's humiliation.)



This doesn't make for pages of purple prose and overdone metaphors, however. There's only so far words can carry you when describing a life-or-death situation that's over in two seconds, and happened largely on reflex. And maybe the authors think readers will be "bored" by descriptions of patient martial arts training and the development of mental discipline, because readers want "cool telepathy stuff" like an octopus with swords and guns!

I give my readers a little more credit. ^_^

The mental discipline learned in martial arts works for everyone - telepath and normal alike. It's just that when telepaths learn these same mental skills, they also develop other capacities that normals don't.

Visualization exercises are just that - exercises. Training wheels, as it were.


End file.
